When Languages Collide

“The wide range of languages treated in When Languages Collide will
give it special appeal, as will the variety of problems considered. The
authors have considerable field experience and hence personal knowledge
of the settings and problems.” —Nancy Dorian, Bryn Mawr College

“By its breadth, interdisciplinary flavor, and focus on applications
of linguistics in the real world, this book should build a unique audience
well beyond linguistics into a whole set of related fields, especially
in social sciences and cultural studies.” —Joseph Salmons, University of
Wisconsin

Language contact is a pervasive phenomenon in human history. Groups
of speakers of different languages regularly come into contact through
trade, war, migrations and the like. As with inter-group contact in general,
language contact can lead to conflict or to coexistence. This volume brings
together fifteen essays on issues pertaining to the causes and results
of the conflicts and more peaceful outcomes when speakers of different
languages come to occupy the same territory.

The contributors in this book, while diverse in their foci, nevertheless
share a common orientation: their fundamental approach is one grounded
in the lives of the speakers, individually and societally. Collectively,
the contributions deal with examples of a broad range of geographic areas
across the globe, and from an even broader range of languages in contact
and conflict.

Brian D. Joseph is professor of Linguistics and Kenneth E. Naylor Professor
of South Slavic Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Johanna S. Destefano is professor emerita of Language, Literacy and
Culture Education, the School of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State
University. Neil G. Jacobs is associate professor of Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies
Program, Department of the Germanic Languages and Literatures at
The Ohio State University. Ilse Lehiste is professor emerita of Linguistics at The Ohio State
University.